"Die? how? Why, just die, that's all," replied Cazauran.
"But _of_ what?" I persisted; "what kills me? _Miss Multon_ at present
dies simply that the author may get rid of her. I don't want to be
laughed at. We are not in the days of 'Charlotte Temple'--we suffer, but
we live. To die of a broken heart is to be guyed, unless there is an
aneurism. Now what can _Miss Multon_ die from? If I once know that, I'll
find out the proper business for the scene."
"Perhaps you'd have some of the men carry knives," sneered Cazauran, "and
then she could be stabbed?"
"Oh, no!" I answered; "knives are not necessary for the stabbing of a
woman; a few sharp, envenomed words can do that nicely--but we are
speaking of death, not wounds; from what is _Miss Multon_ to die?"
Then Mr. Palmer made suggestions, and Miss Morris made suggestions, and
Mr. Cazauran triumphantly wiped them out of existence. But at last
Cazauran himself grudgingly remarked that consumption would do well
enough, and Mr. Palmer and I, as with one vengeful voice, cried out,
_Camille!_ And Cazauran said some things like "Nom de Dieu!" or "Dieu de
Dieu!" and I said: "Chassez a droite," but the little man was vexed and
would not laugh.
Someone proposed a fever--but I raised the contagion question. Poison was
thought of, but that would prevent the summoning of the children from
Paris, by _Dr. Osborne_. We parted that day with the question unanswered.
At next rehearsal I still wondered how I was to die, hard or easy, rigid
or limp, slow or quick. "Oh," I exclaimed, "I must know whether I am to
die in a second or to begin in the first act." And in my own exaggerated,
impatient words I found my first hint--"why _not_ begin to die in the
first act?"
When we again took up the question, I asked, eagerly: "What are those two
collapses caused by--the one at the mirror, the other at the school-table
with the children?"
"Extreme emotion," I was answered.
"Then," I asked, "why not extreme emotion acting upon a weak heart?"
Mr. Palmer was for the heart trouble from the first--he saw its
possibilities, saw that it was new, comparatively speaking at least--I
suppose nothing is really new--and decided in its favor; but for some
reason the little man Cazauran was piqued, and the result was that he
introduced just one single line, that could faintly indicate that _Miss
Multon_ was a victim of heart disease--in the first act, where, after a
violent exclamation from the lady, _Dr. Osborne_ said: "Oh, I thought it
was your heart again," and on eight words of foundation I was expected to
raise a superstructure of symptoms true enough to nature to be readily
recognized as indicating heart disease; and yet oh, difficult task! that
disease must not be allowed to obtrude itself into first place, nor must
it be too poignantly expressed. In brief, we decided I was to show to the
public a case of heart disease, ignored by its victim and only recognized
among the characters about her by the doctor.
And verily my work was cut out for me. Why, when I went to the Doctors
Seguin to be coached, I could not even locate my heart correctly by half
a foot. Both father and son did all they could to teach me the full
horror of _angina pectoris_, which I would, of course, tone down for
artistic reasons. And to this day tears rise in my eyes when I recall the
needless cruelty of the younger Seguin, in running a heart patient up a
long flight of stairs, that I might see the gasping of the gray-white
mouth for breath, the flare and strain of her waxy nostrils. Then, in
remorseful generosity, though heaven knows her coming was no act of mine,
I made her a little gift, and as she was slipping the bill inside her
well-mended glove, her eye caught the number on its corner, and, she must
have been very poor, her tormented and tormenting heart gave a plunge and
sent a rush of blood into her face that made her very eyeballs pinken;
and then again the clutching fingers, the flaring nostrils, the gasping
for air, the pleading look, the frightened eyes! Oh, it is unforgettable!
poor soul! poor soul!
Well, having my symptoms gathered together, they yet had to be sorted
out, toned down, and adapted to this or that occasion. But at least the
work had not been thrown away, for on the first night Dr. Fordyce
Barker--a keen dramatic critic, by the way--occupied with a friend a
private box. He had rescued me from the hands of the specialists in
Paris, and I had at times been his patient. He applauded heartily after
the first two acts, but looked rather worried. At the end of the third
act a gentleman of his party turned and looked at him inquiringly. The
doctor threw up his hands, while shaking his head disconsolately. The
friend said: "Why, I'm surprised--I thought Miss Morris suffered from her
spine?"
"So she does--so she does," nodded Dr. Barker.
"But," went on the friend, "this thing isn't spine--this looks like heart
to me."
"I should say so," responded the doctor. "I knew she wasn't strong--just
a thing of nerves and will--but I never saw a sign of heart trouble
before. But it's here now, and it's bad; for, by Jove, she can't go
through another attack like that and finish this play. Too bad, too bad!"
And his honest sympathy for my new affliction spoiled his evening right
up to the point of discovery that it was all in the play. Then he enjoyed
the laugh against himself almost as much as I enjoyed his recognition of
my laboriously acquired symptoms.
And now for Mr. Palmer's beloved cast.
With what a mixture of pleasure and grief I recall Sara Jewett, the
loveliest woman and the most perfect representative of a French lady of
quality I have ever seen in the part of _Mathilde_.
Mr. James O'Neil's success in _Maurice de la Tour_ was particularly
agreeable to me, because I had earnestly called attention to him some
time before he was finally summoned to New York. His fine work in
Chicago, where I had first met him, had convinced me that he ought to be
here, and that beautiful performance fully justified every claim I had
made for him in the first place. The part is a difficult one. Some men
rant in it, some are savagely cruel, some cold as stone. O'Neil's
_Maurice_ bore his wound with a patient dignity that made his one
outbreak into hot passion tremendously effective, through force of
contrast; while his sympathetic voice gave great value to the last tender
words of pardon.
And that ancient couple--that never-to-be-forgotten pair, Mr. Stoddard
and Mrs. Wilkins! The latter's husband, belonging to the English bar, had
been Sergeant Wilkins, a witty, well-living, popular man, who quite
adored his pretty young wife and lavished his entire income upon their
ever-open house, so that his sudden taking off left her barely able to
pay for a sea of crape--with not a pound left over for a life-preserver
or raft of any kind. But on her return to the stage, her knowledge of
social amenities, the dignity and aplomb acquired by the experienced
hostess, remained with her, in a certain manner, an air of suave and
gentle authority, that was invaluable to her in the performance of
gentlewomen; while the good-fellowship, the downright jollity of her
infectious laugh were the crown of her comedy work. Who can forget the
Multon tea-table scene between Mrs. Wilkins and Mr. Stoddard. How the
audience used to laugh and laugh when, after his accusing snort: "More
copperas!" he sat and glared at her pretty protesting face framed in its
soft white curls. He was so ludicrously savage I had to coin a name for
him; and one night when the house simply would not stop laughing, I
remarked: "Oh, doesn't he look like a perfect old Sardonyx?"
"Yes-m!" quickly replied the property boy beside me; "yes-m, that's the
very beast he reminds _me_ of!"
Certainly, I never expect to find another _Dr. Osborne_ so capable of
contradicting a savage growl with a tender caress.
Mr. Parselle, as the gentle old Latin scholar, tutor, and acting
godfather, was beyond praise. He admitted to me one night, coming out of
a brown study, that he believed _Belin_ was a character actually beyond
criticism, and that, next to creating it as author, he ranked the honor
of acting it; but there spoke the old-school actor who respected his
profession.
And those children--were they not charming? That _Sister Jane_, given so
sweetly, so sincerely by the daughter of the famous Matilda Heron, who,
christened Helene, was known only by the pet name Bijou, in public as
well as in private life. And the boy _Paul_, her little brother. Almost,
I believe, Mabel Leonard was herself created expressly to play that part.
Never did female thing wear male clothes so happily. All the impish
perversity, all the wriggling restlessness of the small boy were to be
found in the person of the handsome, erratic, little Mabel.
Even the two maids were out of the common, one being played by a clever
and very versatile actress, who had been a friend of my old Cleveland
days. She came to me out of the laughing merry past, but all pale and sad
in trailing black, for death had been robbing her most cruelly. She
wished for a New York engagement and astonished me by declaring she would
play anything, no matter how small, if only the part gave her a foothold
on the New York stage.
I sought Mr. Palmer and talked hard and long for my friend, but he
laughed and answered: "An actress as clever as that will be very apt to
slight a part of only two scenes."
But I assured him to the contrary; that she would make the most of every
line, and the part would be a stepping-stone to bigger things. He granted
my prayer, and Louise Sylvester, by her earnestness, her breathless
excitement in rushing to and fro, bearing messages, answering bells, and
her excellent dancing, raised _Kitty_ to a character part, while
_Louise_, the smallest of them all, was played with a brisk and bright
assurance that made it hard to believe that Helen Vincent had come direct
from her convent school to the stage-door--as she had.
A great, great triumph for everyone was that first night of "Miss
Multon," and one of the sweetest drops in my own cup was added by the
hand of New York's honored and beloved poet, Edmund Clarence Stedman,
for, all nested in a basket of sweet violets, came a sonnet from him to
me, and though my unworthiness was evident enough, nevertheless I took
keenest joy in the beauty of its every line--surely a very sweet and
gracious token from one who was secure to one who was still struggling.
And now, when years have passed, he has given me another beautiful memory
to keep the first one company. I was taking my first steps in the new
profession of letters, which seems somewhat uncertain, slow, and
introspective, when compared with the swift, decisive, if rather
superficial profession of acting, and Mr. Stedman, in a pause from his
own giant labor on his great "Anthology," looked at, nay, actually
considered, that shivering fledgling thing, my first book, and wrote a
letter that spelled for me the word _encouragement_, and being a
past-master in the art of subtle flattery, quoted from my own book and
set alight a little flame of hope in my heart that is not extinguished
yet. So gently kind remain some people who are great. Just as Tomasso
Salvini, from the heights of his unquestioned supremacy--but stay, the
line must be drawn somewhere. It would not be kind to go on until my
publisher himself cried: "Halt!"
So I shall stop and lock away the pen and paper--lock them hard and fast,
because so many charming, so many famous people came within my knowledge
in the next few years that the temptation to gossip about them is hard to
resist. But to those patient ones, who have listened to this story of a
little maid's clamber upward toward the air and sunshine, that God meant
for us all, I send greeting, as, between mother and husband, with the
inevitable small dog on my knee, I prepare to lock the desk--I pause just
to kiss my hands to you and say _Au revoir_!